True and False Paths in Spiritual Investigation

Schmidt Number: S-5861

On-line since: 31st May, 2010

I have been
asked to speak in these lectures about paths leading to a knowledge
of the super-sensible world. This knowledge, and our knowledge of the
phenomenal world, the fruit of years of patient and diligent study,
to which we owe the magnificent achievements of modern times, are
complementary. For reality can be apprehended only by the person who
is able to reinforce the remarkable discoveries which the natural and
historical sciences have added to our stock of knowledge in recent
times with insight derived from the spiritual world.

Wherever the
external world confronts us we are in no doubt that it is both
spiritual and physical; behind every physical phenomenon will be
found in some form or other a spiritual agent which is the real
protagonist. The spiritual cannot exist in a vacuum for the spiritual
is operative at all times and actively permeates the physical at some
undefined time or place.

I propose to
discuss in these lectures how the world in which man lives may be
known in its totality, on the one hand through a consideration of his
physical environment and, on the other hand, through the perception
of the spiritual. In this way I hope to indicate the true and
false methods of attaining such knowledge.

Before
touching upon the actual subject matter of these lectures tomorrow I
should like to offer a brief introduction so that you may have some
idea of what to expect from them and what purpose I have in view.
They are concerned in the first place to bring home to us the
question: why do we undertake spiritual investigation at all? Why, as
thinking, feeling, practical persons, are we not prepared to
accept the phenomenal world as it is and take an active part in it?
Why do we strive at all to attain knowledge of a spiritual world? In
this context I should like to refer to an ancient conception, an old
saying that embraces a truth ever more widely accepted and which,
inherited from the earliest days of human thinking and aspiration, is
still found today when we inquire into the Ground of the world.
Without in any way using these ancient, outmoded conceptions as a
basis, I would like, none the less, to call attention to them
whenever the occasion arises.

From the
East there echoes across thousands of years the saying: the world
that we perceive with our senses is Maya, the Great Illusion. And if,
as man has always felt during the course of his development, the
world is Maya, then he must transcend the ‘Great
Illusion’ to find ultimate truth. But why did man look upon
this world of sense-impressions as Maya? Why, precisely in the
earliest times when men were nearer to the spirit than they are
today, did the Mystery Centres arise, Centres that were dedicated to
the cultivation of science, religion, art and practical living, whose
aim was to point the way to truth and reality, in contradistinction
to that which, purely in the external world, was the Great Illusion,
the source of man's knowledge and activity? How is one to account for
those illustrious sages who trained their neophytes in the ancient,
holy Mysteries and sought to lead them from illusion to truth? This
question can only be answered if one reviews man more
dispassionately, from a more detached angle.

“Know
thyself!” — such is another ancient saying that comes
down to us from the past. From the fusion of these two sayings
— ‘the world is Maya,’ from the East, and
‘know thyself!’, from ancient Greece — there first
arose the quest for spiritual knowledge amongst later humanity. But
in the ancient Mysteries, too, the quest for truth and reality had
its origin in this twofold perception that, in the final analysis,
the world is illusion and that man must attain to
self-knowledge.

It is,
however, only through life itself that man can come to terms with
this question, not through thinking alone, but through the will, and
through full participation in the reality immediately
accessible to us as human beings. Neither in full consciousness, nor
in clear understanding, but with deep emotion, every man the world
over can say to himself: ‘Such as is the outer world that you
see and hear, that you cannot be.’

This feeling
goes deep. One must reflect upon the implication of these words:
‘Such as is the external world that you perceive with your five
senses, that you cannot be.’ When we look at the plants we see
the first green shoots emerge in springtime; they blossom in summer
and towards autumn they ripen and bear fruit. We see them grow, fade
and die: the duration of their life-cycle is a single year. We see,
too, how many plants absorb from the soil certain substances
which build up the main stem. On the way here yesterday evening by
road we saw many extremely old plants which had absorbed quantities
of these hardening substances in order that their life-cycle should
not be limited to a single year, but should be extended over a longer
period of time and thus would bear new growing-points on their stems.
And it is given to man to observe how these plants grow, fade and
die.

And when he
observes the animals, he realizes their impermanence; so too with the
mineral kingdom. He observes the mineral deposits in the majestic
mountain ranges. And armed with his scientific knowledge, he realizes
that they too are impermanent. And finally he turns to some
conception such as the Ptolemaic or Copernican system, for example,
or some conception borrowed from the ancient or later Mysteries
— and he concludes as follows: all that I see in the splendour
of the stars, all that irradiates me from sun and moon with their
wondrous and complex orbits — all this, too, is impermanent.
But apart from impermanence, the kingdom of nature has other
attributes. These are of such a kind that man, if he is to know
himself, should not assume that he and all that is impermanent
— the plants, minerals, sun, moon and stars — are
similarly constituted.

Man then
comes to the conclusion: I bear within me some quality that is
different from anything I see and hear around me. I must arrive at an
understanding of my own being, for I cannot find it in anything that
I see and hear.

In all the
ancient Mysteries men felt this urge to discover the reality of their
inner being, whereas all the transient phenomena of space and time
were felt to be an expression of the Great Illusion. And so, in order
to arrive at an understanding of man's inner being, they looked
beyond the findings of sense-perception.

And here
they experienced a spiritual world. How to find the right path to the
spiritual world will be the subject of these lectures. You can
readily imagine that man's first impulse will be to follow the same
procedure he adopted in exploring the phenomenal world. He will
simply transfer the method of sense-perception to his exploration of
the spiritual world. If, however, investigation into the phenomenal
world is usually fraught with illusion, then it is probable that the
possibilities of illusion will be increased rather than
diminished if the methods for investigating the phenomenal
world are also applied to the spiritual world. And, in effect, this
is what happens. In consequence we merely become the victims of
an illusion all the more compelling.

And again,
if we harbour vague anticipations, nebulous enthusiasms,
unaccountable presentiments from dark corners of the soul,
dream-fantasies about the spiritual, it will remain forever unknown
to us. We remain in the world of conjecture; we share a belief, but
have no real knowledge. If we are content simply to adopt this
course, the spiritual will become not better known to us, but
progressively more unknown. Thus man may go doubly
astray.

On the one
hand, he pursues the same line of enquiry in relation to the
spiritual and phenomenal world. And the phenomenal world is found to
be illusion. If he pursues the same approach to the spiritual world,
as the ordinary spiritualists sometimes do, then he is subject
to even greater illusions.

On the other
hand he can follow the other way of approach. In this case no attempt
is made to investigate the spiritual world along clear-cut,
intelligible lines, but through self-induced belief and nebulous
enthusiasm. Consequently the spiritual world remains a closed
book. No matter how urgently we pursue the path of vague
conjecture and emotional enthusiasm we shall know progressively less
about the spiritual world. In the first instance the illusion is
magnified, in the second, our ignorance. As against these two false
paths we must find the right path.

We must bear
in mind how impossibly difficult it is to substitute a knowledge of
the true self for a knowledge of the Great Illusion in the sense I
have indicated; and furthermore, if one intends to prepare
oneself for a true, authentic approach to spiritual understanding,
how impossible it is, in a state of illusion, to overcome all these
nebulous feelings about the true self and come to a clear perception
of reality. Let us look quite impartially at what is here involved. A
materialist can never feel such deep admiration and respect for the
recent scientific discoveries of Darwin, Huxley, Spencer and
others as the man who has insight into the spiritual world. For these
men, and many others since the time of Giordano Bruno, spared no
effort in order to gain insight into what the ancient Mysteries
considered to be the world of Maya. There is no need to accept the
theories advanced by Darwin, Huxley, Spencer, Copernicus, Galileo and
the rest. Let others theorize about the universe as they will; we
have no intention of being drawn into their arguments. But we must
recognize the tremendous impetus given by these men to the detailed,
factual study of specific organs in man, animals and plants, or of
some particular problem relating to the mineral kingdom. Just imagine
how much we have learned in recent times about the functions of the
glands, nerves, heart, brain, lungs, liver, etc. as a result of their
stimulating researches. They deserve our greatest respect and
admiration. But in real life this knowledge can take us only to a
certain point. Let me give you three examples to illustrate my
point.

We can
follow in great detail the first human egg-cell; how it gradually
develops into a human embryo, how the various organs evolve step by
step and how, from the tiny peripheral organs the complex heart and
circulatory system are built up. All this can be demonstrated. We can
follow the organic growth of the plant from root to blossom and seed
and from this factual information we can construct a theory of the
universe that embraces the Cosmos.

Our
astronomers and astro-physicists have already done this. They set up
a theory of the Cosmos showing how the world emerges from a
stellar-nebular system which assumed a progressively more definite
form and was capable of spontaneous generation. But despite all
this theorizing, we come ultimately face to face once again with the
essential being of man, the problem of how to respond to the
injunction, ‘Know thyself!’ If we know only the self that
is limited to a knowledge of the minerals, plants, animals, human
glandular and circulatory systems, we know only the world man
enters at birth and leaves at death. But, in the final analysis, man
feels that he is not limited to the temporal world. Therefore, in
face of all that knowledge of the external world yields in such
grandeur and perfection, he must answer from the depths of his being:
all this you affirm only between birth and death. But do you know
your essential self, your true essence? The moment that the knowledge
of man and nature has moral and religious implications, the human
being whose organs can only apprehend the world of the Great Illusion
is reduced to silence. The injunction, “Know thyself, so that
thou mayest know in thine innermost being whence thou comest and
whither thou art going,” this problem of cognition, the moment
religious issues are raised, cannot be answered at this limited level
of understanding.

On entering
the Mystery Schools the neophyte was left in no doubt that however
much he may have learned through sense-observation, this information
could offer no answer to the great riddle of human nature when
religious issues were involved.

Furthermore,
though we may have the most precise knowledge of the structure of the
human head, of the characteristic movements of man's arms and
hands, of his gait and stance, though we may respond never so
sensitively to the forms of animals and plants in so far as we can
know them through sense-observation, directly we try to give
artistic expression to this information we are again faced with
an unanswerable problem.

For how have
men hitherto expressed through art their knowledge of the world? They
owed their inspiration to the Mystery teachings. Their knowledge of
nature and its various aspects was related to the existing
level of understanding, but at the same time it was enriched by
spiritual insight.

One need
only look back to ancient Greece. Today a sculptor or painter works
from the model — at least this was the practice until recently.
He sets out to copy and imitate. The Greek artist did not work in
this way, although he is alleged to have done so; rather did he sense
the spiritual human form within himself In sculpture, if he wished to
portray an arm in movement, he was aware that the external
world was informed by a spiritual content, that every material object
has been created out of the spirit and in his work he strove to
recreate the spirit.

Even as late as the Renaissance a painter did not use
a model; it served only as a stimulus. He knew intuitively what
activated hand or arm and expressed this information in his rendering
of movement. Merely to portray the external and superficial aspects
of the world of Maya, merely to copy the model, does not advance our
understanding; we do not see thereby more deeply into man, but are
concerned only with externals and so remain a spectator outside
him.

From the
standpoint of art, if we fail to transcend the world of Maya we are
faced with the formidable problem of human nature and no answer is
vouchsafed us.

And again,
on entering the old Mysteries, it was made clear to the neophyte who
was about to be initiated: if you remain within the world of Maya,
you will be unable to penetrate the essential being of man or of any
other kingdom of Nature. You cannot become an artist. In the sphere
of art it was found necessary to remind the neophyte of the clear
injunction, “Know thyself,” and then he began to feel the
need for spiritual knowledge.

But, you
will object, there are thoroughly materialistic sculptors. After all
they were no mere amateurs and knew what they were about. They too
knew how to draw forth the secrets from their model and invest their
figures and motifs with these secrets. That is indeed so, but whence
did they derive their knowledge? People fail to realize that this
ability did not come from the artists themselves. They owed it to
earlier artists who in their turn had it from their
predecessors. They worked from a tradition. But they were
unwilling to admit this because they claimed they owed everything to
themselves. They knew how the old masters worked and imitated them.
But the earliest of the old masters learned their secret from the
spiritual insights of the Mysteries. Raphae1 and Michelangelo learned
it from those who still drew on the Mysteries.

But true art
must be created out of the spiritual. There is no other solution. As
soon as we touch upon the problem of man, any perception of the Great
Illusion has no answer to life's problems, to the problem of man's
destiny. If we are to return to the fountain-head of art and artistic
creativity we must recover insight into the spiritual
world.

Now a third
example. The botanist or zoologist can gain wonderfully detailed
knowledge of the form of every available plant. The bio-chemist
can describe the processes that take place in plant life. He can also
tell how foodstuffs are assimilated in the metabolic system, are
absorbed by the blood vessels in the walls of the alimentary canal
and are carried in the blood to the nervous system. A gifted
anatomist, physiologist, botanist or geologist can cover a wide
field of the world of Maya, but if he intends to use this knowledge
for purposes of healing or medical treatment, if he wishes to press
forward from the outer, or even the inner constitution of man to his
essential being, he cannot do it.

You will
reply: but there are doctors in plenty who are materialists and have
no interest in the spiritual world. They treat patients in accordance
with the methods of natural science and yet they achieve
results.

That is so.
But they are able to affect cures because they too have behind them a
tradition based upon an old world-conception. Old remedies were
derived from the Mysteries, but they all shared a remarkable
characteristic. If you look at an old prescription, you will find
that it is highly complicated. It makes considerable demands upon
those who prepare it and who apply it to the particular purpose
laid down by tradition. If you had gone to an old physician and had
asked how such a prescription was made up he would never have
replied: first I make chemical experiments and ascertain
whether the materials behave in such and such a way; then I try it
out on the patients and note the results. Such an idea would never
have occurred to him. People have no idea of the circumstances
prevalent in earlier epochs. He would have replied: I live in a
laboratory (if I may call it that) that was equipped on the basis of
the Mystery teaching and when I light upon a remedy I owe it to
the Gods. He was quite clear on this point, that he was in close
communication with the spiritual world through the whole
atmosphere engendered in his laboratory. Spiritual beings were as
unmistakably present to him as human beings are to us. He was aware
that through the influence of spiritual beings he had attained a
higher dimension of being and was able to achieve more than would
otherwise have been possible. And he proceeded to make up his
complicated prescriptions, not from natural knowledge, but as
the Gods dictated. It was known within the Mysteries that, in
order to understand man, one should not be identified with the world
of Maya, but press on to the truth of the divine world.

With all
their knowledge of the external world men are further today from the
truth of the divine world than were the ancients with their knowledge
derived from the Mysteries. But the way back must be found
again.

From the
third example it is evident that if we seek to heal, even though
equipped with the widest possible knowledge of nature (that is,
of the world of Maya), then we are faced again with the unsolved
problems of human life and destiny. If we wish to understand man from
the standpoint of Maya, the “Great Illusion,” from the
standpoint of the “Know thyself” which is demanded for
the purposes of healing, then we shall be unable to advance a
single step further in our understanding.

And so, in
the light of these examples, we can say: he who wishes to bridge the
gap between the world of Maya and the “Know thyself” will
realize, the moment he approaches the human being with religious
feeling, as a creative artist, as healer or doctor, that he stands
before a void if his sole starting-point is the world of illusion. He
is powerless unless he finds a form of knowledge that transcends the
knowledge of external nature, which is knowledge of Maya, the Great
Illusion.

Let us now
draw a comparison between the way in which men sought, out of the
spirit of the Mysteries, to reach a comprehensive knowledge of the
world and the way in which this is attempted today. We shall then be
in a position to find our bearings in relation to the paths leading
to this comprehensive knowledge

A few
thousand years ago the world and its divine Ground or essence were
spoken of very differently from the way in which authorities speak
to-day. Let us look back to that epoch a few thousand years ago, when
a sublime and majestic knowledge flourished in the Mysteries of the
Near East. We will attempt to look more closely into the nature of
this knowledge by giving a brief description of its
characteristics.

In ancient
Chaldea, the following was taught: man's soul forces reach
their maximum potentiality when he directs the eye of the spirit to
the wonderful contrast between the life of sleep (his consciousness
is dimmed, he is oblivious of his environment) and his waking life
(he is clear-sighted, he is aware of the world around). These
alternating conditions of sleep and waking were experienced
differently thousands of years ago. Sleep was less unconscious,
waking life not so fully conscious. In sleep man was aware of
powerful, ever changing images, of the flux and movement of the
life of worlds. He was in touch with the divine Ground, the essence,
of the universe.

The dimming
of consciousness during sleep is a consequence of human
evolution. A few thousand years ago waking life was not so
clear and lucid as today. Objects had no clearly defined contours,
they were blurred. They radiated spiritual qualities in various
forms. There was not the same abrupt transition from sleep to waking
life. The men of that epoch were still able to distinguish these two
states, and the environment of their waking life was called
‘Apsu.’ This life of flux and movement experienced in
sleep, this realm that blurred the clear distinction between the
minerals, plants and animals of waking life, was called
‘Tiamat.’ Now the teaching in the Chaldean Mystery
Schools was that when man, in a state of sleep, shared the flux and
movement of Tiamat, he was closer to truth and reality than when he
lived his conscious life amongst minerals, plants and animals. Tiamat
was nearer to the Ground of the world, more closely related to the
world of man than Apsu. Apsu was more remote. Tiamat represented
something that lay nearer to man. But in the course of time Tiamat
underwent changes and this was brought to the notice of the neophytes
in the Mystery Schools. From the life of flux and movement of Tiamat
emerged demoniacal forms, equine shapes with human heads, leonine
forms with the heads of angels. They arose out of the warp and woof
of Tiamat and these demoniacal forms became hostile to
man.

Then there
appeared in the world a powerful Being, Ea. Anyone today who has an
ear for sounds can feel how the conjunction of these two vowels
points to that powerful Being who, according to these old Mystery
teachings, stood at man's side to help him when the demons of Tiamat
grew strong. Ea or Ia, became later — if one
anticipates the particle ‘Soph’ — Soph-Ea, Sophia.
Ea implies approximately abstract wisdom, wisdom that permeates all
things. Soph is a particle that suggests (approximately) a state of
being. Sophia, Sophea, Sopheia, the all-pervading, omnipresent wisdom
sent to mankind her son, then known as Marduk, later called Micha-el,
the Micha-el who is invested with authority from the hierarchy of the
Angels. He is the same Being as Marduk, the son of Ea, wisdom —
Marduk-Micha-el.

According to
the Mystery teachings Marduk-Micha-el was great and powerful and all
the demoniacal beings such as horses with human heads and leonine
forms with angels' heads — all these surging, mobile,
demoniacal forms, conjoined as the mighty Tiamat, were arrayed
against him. Marduk-Micha-el was powerful enough to command the storm
wind that sweeps through the world. All that Tiamat embodied was seen
as a living reality, and rightly so, for that is how they experienced
it. All these demons together were envisaged as the adversary, a
powerful dragon which embodied all the demoniacal powers born out of
Tiamat, the night. And this dragon-being, breathing fire and fury,
advanced upon Marduk. Micha-el first smote him with various
weapons and then drove the whole force of his storm-wind into
the dragon's entrails so that Tiamat burst asunder and was scattered
abroad. [The “Poem
of Creation” says: “The North Wind bore (it) to places
undisclosed.”] And so Marduk-Micha-el was
able to create out of him the Heavens above and the Earth beneath.
Thus arose the Above and the Below.

Such was the
teaching of the Mysteries. The eldest son of Ea, wisdom, has
vanquished Tiamat and has fashioned from one part of him the Heavens
above and from the other the Earth below. And if, O man, you lift
your eyes to the stars, you will see one part of that which
Marduk-Micha-el formed in the Heavens out of the fearful abyss of
Tiamat for the benefit of mankind. And if you look below, where the
plants grow out of the mineralized Earth, where minerals begin to
take form, you will find the other part which the son of Ea, wisdom,
has recreated for the benefit of mankind.

Thus the
ancient Chaldeans looked back to the formative period of the world,
to the forming from the formless; they saw into the workshop of
creation and perceived a living reality. These demon forms of the
night, all these nocturnal monsters, the weaving, surging beings of
Tiamat had been transformed by Marduk-Micha-el into the stars above
and the Earth beneath. All the demons transformed by
Marduk-Micha-el into shining stars, all that grows out of the
Earth, the transformed skin and tissue of Tiamat — this is the
form in which the men of ancient times pictured whatsoever came to
them through the old attributes of the soul. That information
they accounted as knowledge.

Then the
priests of the Mysteries anticipated the future by studying the
psychic powers of their pupils. And when the neophytes had developed
adequate strength of soul they were in a position to understand the
first elementary lessons that children are taught in school today
— that the Earth revolves round the Sun and that worlds are
formed from nebulae. This knowledge was a well-guarded secret in
those days. The teaching given openly was concerned, on the other
hand, with the deeds of Marduk-Micha-el which I have just described
to you. In our schools and universities today — and they lay no
claim to secrecy — and even in our primary schools the
Copernican system and astro-physics are taught, subjects which, in
ancient times, only the sages dared undertake or were permitted to
undertake and then only after long preparation. What every schoolboy
knows could, in those days, be learned only by Initiates. Today all
this is part of the school curriculum.

There was an
epoch dating further back still than the epoch of the old Chaldean
Mysteries, when people spoke only of such things as I have described
— of Ea, of Marduk-Micha-el, of Apsu and Tiamat. They
abhorred everything taught by these ‘eccentric’ Mystery
teachers about the movements of the stars or of the sun; they wished
to study, not the invisible, but solely the visible and tangible,
though in the personified or symbolic forms revealed through old
clairvoyance. They rejected the knowledge which the old
Initiate-teachers and their pupils had acquired. Then came the time
when the primeval wisdom was gradually diffused from the East, and
both forms of knowledge were treasured. Men set great store on the
manifestations of the Beings of the spiritual worlds, the deeds of
Marduk-Micha-el, for example; and equally they treasured what could
be illustrated diagrammatically — the sun in the centre
and the planetary bodies revolving round it in cycles and epicycles.
Then, in the course of time, insight into the spiritual worlds, the
worlds of demons and gods, was lost and intellectual knowledge was
fostered, the knowledge which we prize so highly today and which
reached its zenith in the early years of our epoch. We are now living
in an epoch that ignores the spiritual, even as the phenomenal world
was ignored by those to whom the spiritual was self-evident. We have
to anticipate the time when we shall again be in a position to accept
side by side with the teachings of astronomers,
astrophysicists, zoologists and botanists a knowledge of
spiritual realities derived from spiritual insights. This epoch is
now imminent and we must be ready to meet it if we are to accomplish
our task and rediscover amongst other things the religious source of
art and the art of healing.

Just as in
ancient times the spiritual dwelt amongst men whilst the material
world was contemned, to be followed by an epoch when material
knowledge was fostered and the spiritual suppressed, so now the time
must come when we must transform our vast, comprehensive knowledge of
the external world, so deserving of admiration, into a renewed
knowledge of the Mystery teachings. Since the material science of
today has torn down the edifice of the old spirituality, so
that nothing survives of the ancient structure save, at most, those
fragments that we unearth, we must once again recover the spiritual;
but there must be a full and clear understanding of everything we
bring to light when we delve into the history of past epochs. We must
find our way back to the spiritual through a new creative art imbued
with religious feeling, through a new art of healing and through a
new knowledge of the spirit that permeates the being of
man.

These are
three examples which I have given you today in the hope that we may
strive to renew the Mysteries which shall give us an understanding of
the Ground and principle of the world in its entirety and an
understanding of man who shall work as a fully integrated person
rather than as a narrow materialist to promote the welfare and
enlightenment of his fellow men.